


An Eternal Missing

by JustJasper



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Wakes & Funerals, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 09:02:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10331147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustJasper/pseuds/JustJasper
Summary: A story about grief and strength, and how good Maevaris Tilani looks in blue.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pearwaldorf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearwaldorf/gifts).



> Working title: "four funerals and a wedding".

“ **Grief is love turned into an eternal missing.” - Rosamund Lupton**

 Criminals do not have funerals, traditionally – not outside of a private family affair, at least. It wouldn't be wise to celebrate the life of someone that the Imperium had executed, after all.

It'll be a scandal, for sure, but a minor one. The invitations are passed to the Magisterium at large as if Athanir Tilani hadn't been a condemned man, but the attendance is not lacking, even so.

Yes, there are those have have come to pay their respect, the usual audiences to grief and to the networking opportunity offered by Magisters gathered in one place, and those that have come to see Athanir Tilani's delicate daughter break apart.

She's _only_ twenty three summers old, and with _everything_ , how is she to _cope_?

Carried by spite, perhaps. Maevaris wears blue in mourning, watered cerulean silk in contrast to a sea of navy and midnight, her lazurite jewellery glittering in the light. They are there to see her, and they will.

“My condolences, Tilani. A most unfortunate affair.”

She is polite, as she must be, even to those who use her family name because they can't bring themselves to call her by her own name. They would never dare to use her previous name, even though she's fairly sure the information has been passed around as a potential weapon, and even of the worst of them won't call her womanhood into question in her own house.

It's a toothless thing. She's not ashamed of the name, or of what it means of her past.

“Maevaris. I'm so very sorry for your loss, child.”

Halward Pavus is kind, and polite, clasping her hand briefly between his, and Mae cannot shake the sense that he's not to be trusted. Not so much different than most Magisters, frankly, even those she might call friends, in reference.

“Thank you.”

“It will be a difficult time, as you take your father's seat in the Magisterium. Do call on me if you need any assistance.”

“I will.”

She won't.

Dorian is twenty-one and pretty, with a ring glittering at his nose and wings of his khol much better than when Mae first taught him. He pulls a face that means 'take me somewhere we can gossip', so she hands Halward off to another guest with the skill she's perfected over the years and gestures him towards the exedra.

“Aren't you meant to be in a Circle?” she asked. She sees the eye roll in the shape of his shoulders before he turns and she can see it on his face.

“Mae.”

It's an old joke – Dorian was in and out of them so often, his list of transgressions of much amusement to them both.

“Oh come on, you know I'm only teasing.”

“Well, tutors are much the same. You'd think the enchanters had never been challenged to a duel before. My father is so angry, he didn't want me to come tonight. Apparently this tutor came _highly_ recommended.”

“He only wants what's best for you.”

It feels like a betrayal to tell him so – a year ago, she was his peer. A young woman, apprenticed to her father, preparing to take his mantle but just as wild as Dorian, if so much better at knowing when to stop and knowing how not to get caught.

“I'd rather have your circumstance. No Circles, no tutors, that would be ideal.”

No Circles, because they dormed her with boys and boys are cruel, and enchanters crueler. No tutors, because the scandal was too much to overcome and all enquiries were turned away.

“You know I didn't choose that.”

Dorian crumples slightly. Mae touches the space between his shoulder blades, spreads her hand out over the navy linen of his shirt. Before he can apologize—

“It's alright.”

She steers him into a seat below the trellis, and goes to the cabinet and breaks the ward her father put there – one she learned at fourteen how to break and re-cast. There's only a little left of the sickly sweet vanilla tobacco, and the long stem of his pipe is reaching the end of it's days. The fire rune set into the bowl is tricky, and takes a few tries to start, but then flares warm in her palm.

“My father used to smoke here,” she says, feeling fond as the familiar smell wafts around. “He'd hide it. I think he was ashamed that he needed a place to come and cope.”

It goes down smooth, warm in her throat and lungs as she sits down next to Dorian. He's eyeing her, some attempt at casual. She hands the pipe to him, smirking.

“We'll tell your father I refused you, even though you asked, of course. Best not to give him something else to be angry at you for.”

“It's only a pipe,” Dorian grumbles, taking a well practised pull from it. “I'm a grown man.”

“He just thinks you do everything to excess.”

Dorian laughs. “He has the slaves water my wine to excess now, as if I'm going to get drunk at dinner. That's rather more my mother's style.”

They laugh, and sit in the quiet garden room smoking for a time.

“Once you've found someone to apprentice to, you won't have to do as he bids anymore.”

Dorian hums, blowing smoke into the night air.

“I suppose you'll not apprentice to anyone else now?”

“I'll be taking my father's seat.”

She was always meant to – but not this young, not this way.

“I could be your apprentice.”

She laughs.

“I could!”

“Oh, that would be _fun_ , but I'm no teacher.”

Truthfully, she is barely older than he is, but two years feels like miles between them now. What she means to do, what she must do... she would not make her friend bear it.

*

She shows up uninvited, wearing sleeveless red chiffon, with gold embroidery at the edges. There's a murmur that shivers through the space as she enters – a sea of dark mourning blue, even a few crocodile tears already being shed for Magister Tarun.

The crowd falls quiet and parts for the widower Albanus Tarun, who strides towards her and raises his hand.

“How dare you!”

Mae catches his hand in hers, takes the force of the blow – feels it all through her shoulder, but stands firm. She's twenty four and now that the men and women who betrayed her father are all dead, nobody will make the mistake of underestimating her again.

She squeezes his fingers until she hears a bone pop out of joint.

“How dare you show up at her funeral, you murderer!”

Mae releases him. He snatches his hand to his chest, but stands firm against her. Cowering would be admitting defeat, of course.

“I didn't kill your wife. It would be dishonest to say her death doesn't benefit me – she was, after all, doing all she could to prevent me from taking my rightful place in the Magisterium.”

“So you came to gloat?”

“I came to speak to you. In private, if you would.”

“You think I would grant you audience? Speak to me here or leave my house.”

“Very well. Magister Caedus – I think he's over there somewhere, pretending to cry-” she gestures vaguely, “ has lead the charge to have me denied by father's seat. He also orchestrated your wife's death.”

A timely dramatic intake of breath from the watching crowd, and a sudden murmur of chatter.

“It was to be my fault, of course. Once you're ready, I can offer the proof you need to have him arrested.”

Or to justify killing him himself, as Mae would.

“I offer sincere condolences. Vitya was a fine woman, I know that when this whole inheritance matter had been settled, she would have been gracious in defeat.”

The crowd parts for her then as she makes her exit into her waiting carriage.

Thorold is in bed already, reading and muttering to himself when Mae returns home finally.

“Another offering from your dear cousin?” she asks, as she braces herself against the door in a bid to rid herself of her shoes.

“Just a letter. It's done?”

“It is done.”

He watches her as she takes off her jewellery at her vanity, as she unbraids her long hair and lets her dress pool where it drops. By the time she approaches the bed, he's set aside his letters and the little gold spectacles that were perched on his nose.

“You'll be a Magister before the week is out.”

“I couldn't have done it without you,” she says, as she sits beside him. He reaches out and takes her face into one large, calloused palm and brings her close to kiss her. His beard is soft, his thumb firm where it strokes her cheek. “We're an excellent match.”

“We're destiny, amata.”

She hums fondly.

“Come now, service me with a dramatic fuck to top the dramatic day I've had.”

“Your wish, my lady...”

He does, of course – touches her and sucks her and presses his short, fat cock into her while she moans and gasps her pleasure, until the moons are high and they're both sated.

“You keep pleasuring me like that, I might have to marry you.”

Thorold laughs, finds her thigh and squeezes gently. “I'm counting on it.”

*

A fall. It's a ridiculous, mundane, tragedy that takes her love from her, and she doesn't for a moment believe it an accident.

Her dress is the deepest blue velvet, with cleric sleeves detailed in hundreds of tiny beads of volcanic aurum, to match the extravagant chandelier of a necklace she wears. A gift. His last.

She has cried so much already – screamed and broken things and twisted the Fade in her rage as if she could bring him back. His body lay there for days, preserved with magic, she could have, Dorian would have helped, if she'd asked—

No. His life is over. Her life remains, in tatters.

Mae thinks she'll only ever want to wear blue again. She has the means, after all, the funds to commission an endless number of blue dresses, each one with her grief sewn into the seams.

The funeral is well attended, though her guards have strict instructions of who to let pass the gate. Thorold understood Tevinter, even for all he wasn't considered truly Tevene for being a dwarf. He would understand the political opportunity his funeral offers – but she hates herself for the brief moment she considered using it as such.

Mae watches the pyre burn long after the rites have been said; Tevene and Dwarven alike, as his body burns.

_Atrast tunsha. Totarnia amgetol tavash aeduc._

She wards the pyre so it can burn down in peace. Later she'll gather his ashes, and then—

“Would he want to return to the Stone?”

His cousin Varric makes a thoughtful noise from where he's been standing next to her.

“Didn't see him much, you know. You were his wife.”

She wasn't officially – but she will insist on being a widow and not simply a woman with a lost lover forever.

“For too brief a time. I knew him for near three years, and we were so concerned with living that we didn't speak of death. I made enquiry to the Ambassadoria, but the Tethras name is not considered worthy for passage. I could make enquiry with Orzammar, but I'm not sure he'd have wanted it.”

Varric resettles his weight, as he watches the pyre with her.

“Put his ashes in a stone box, if it feels right. But you've done right by him, said the rites. Pretty good accent too, cousin. You've done what you need to to send his spirit back to the Stone.”

As wrong as the thought is, she wishes his spirit could stay.

“Thank you.”

Later, after the mourners have all left and the servants dismissed, Dorian brings a bottle of wine to her where she sits in the shelter of the courtyard and considers the extinguished pyre. In a fit of narrative sensibility, the skies have opened in a downpour, and the rain strikes noisily against the barrier she's cast around the funeral pyre.

He's still pretty, but more handsome now, more grown into his features. He's experimenting with facial hair, and the dark circles under his eyes are deep and longstanding.

He yawns hugely, stretches his entire body like a cat waking from a nap.

Whatever he's doing with Alexius – well, Alexius hasn't been the same since his wife died. Didn't attend today, although she'd consider them civil acquaintances. Perhaps it's only now that she can begin to fathom how the grief has stolen his life. And to have it dragged out with the inevitability of his son's condition can only make it that much worse.

“Are you still working on things you won't tell me about?”

Dorian shoots her an apologetic look. “It's not that I don't trust you.”

“I know that. But it makes a girl curious. Don't run yourself into the ground, Dorian. He's meant to guide you and further your education. If he wants a dogsbody he's got slaves.”

They fall into quiet, as the rain beats down against the shimmer of Mae's barrier over the pyre, and thunder rumbles from a few miles away.

“You're going to kill someone for this, aren't you?” Dorian says, in gentle humour. She takes a long drink from the glass of wine.

“I am going take Thorold's fortune and use it to make myself indispensable to the Magisterium, like my father never could. He was knowledgeable about the economy, even if he could never turn it into anything that might have saved him from his fate. They will regret thinking I am merely my father's daughter.”

She drinks again, laughs into her wine.

“And yes, I am going to find out exactly what happened to Thorold, and kill everyone who had a hand in it.”

She takes another drink, another laugh, and before she can gather herself, it becomes a sob. An ugly, clawing thing that goes for the throat and has her wine glass toppling to the stone floor to shatter, the contents spilt over the paving and running through the channels of the grout.

Dorian comes to her and pulls her to him as she makes to rise, lets her tuck her face against his chest and sob.

She knows she'll wear blue for the rest of her days.

*

Halward Pavus had been no ally to Maevaris or to her upstart Lucerni party in the years since Dorian had left Tevinter. Not an enemy by far, offering no hindrance, but also no help.

Dorian has never told her what caused the great rift between them – that in itself speaks to the magnitude of whatever betrayal Dorian suffered at his father's hands.

So she has offered him civility over the years, and nothing else.

It's strange, to feel more kinship with him in death than in life. He was a long-standing moderate, of the type Mae is eyeing for the Lucerni to focus some of their resources on allying, and whoever murdered him is likely an enemy to her too.

She arrives at the Pavus estate dressed simply; a deep blue dress, with serpentstone sewn into the neckline and cuffs. The house is quiet, the air still and fully of the sickly smell of lillies placed about the entrance hall. After a moment she can make out the low murmur of slave chatter from a room off the entrance hall.

“ _She's going to drink herself into another stupor. Showing up to her own husband's funeral drunk.”_

“ _Don't talk about her like that.”_

“ _Why not? She's probably already sauced.”_

“ _You'll get us all in trouble with talk like that.”_

“ _Why? We don't answer to her anymore since the Lord came home.”_

“ _And he doesn't pay you to insult his mother.”_

Not slaves, then. They had spoken of it, the frustratingly slow transition, but it would seem Dorian has wasted no time. She knows, now more than ever, together they will do amazing things with the Lucerni.

In his room, Dorian is not yet dressed. He sits on the bed in his underwear, staring into the middle distance. She vaguely remembers the hours before her own father's funeral, and remembers feeling as lost as Dorian looks.

“How was your journey from Orlais?” Mae asks, pulling Dorian from his reverie.

“Fine.” He nods. “Fine.”

“And how is the Iron Bull?”

There are bruises all about him; a large, blotchy one at his ribs that's been partway healed with magic, and smaller tell-tale ones vaguely in the shape of fingertips, in the shape of ropes at his wrist, that have been left to blossom.

She bruises easily, but Thorold was so gentle with her. Sometimes, though, when they had been apart for some time – she remembers how much she cherished the mottled purpling of her skin then, proof of contact.

“Well,” Dorian says, as he rises. Distracted, as he works himself into navy leggings. “You would like him, Mae.”

“If he's half as good as your gushing letters, then I already like him.”

“He wanted to come to with me.”

“That's sweet,” she says, tamping down the urge to coo. “And foolish.”

“I know. I—”

He braces against pain halfway into his shirt. He makes a sound of frustration and hurls it to the floor, rubs his face with his hands.

Mae crosses the room, her heels clacking with purpose on the marble, and helps Dorian to ease himself into the shirt. He makes a fumbled attempt with the buttons, before he gives up and lets her do it. He lets her help him into the tunic she commissioned for him while he was in Orlais him, to take some of the mundane burden of organising for a funeral from his shoulders. The flowers, too, and the pyre set up within the grounds.

Dorian's mourning robe is deep azure silk that nips in with a wide belt at his waist, glittering gems at the cuffs and neck in compliment to the stones set into his family crest, which she hangs around his neck, and settles her hand there over it.

Grief bleeds out of him, weighs him down – and it cannot leave the room. She will not let anyone use this pain against him and everything he has created for himself in Tevinter now – all that possibility and promise that they share as they try to change an entire society.

“If you need it,” she says, “I will help you find who killed your father, and end them. I've experience, you'll appreciate.”

He puts his hand over Mae's, and takes a breath.

“Thank you.”

“You're welcome, my friend.”

*

Under the Antivan sun people chatter, musicians play, and the smell of hyacinths waft from the garden beds. Maevaris wears pearls strung around her neck and arms, and light blue taffeta that gathers to reveal a little leg.

A beautiful, simple ceremony, and now people talk and drink and mill about the garden. Varric is holding court nearby with a group of admirers, and she is almost sure a redheaded woman with a musical laugh wearing an elegant hooded ensemble is the White Divine – its seems a rather open secret, if the people talking to her with familiarity are any indication.

Mae would have liked to have had a ceremony like this when she married Thorold. There would have been opposition of course – she was not truly eligible to marry, their union would not be sanctioned, it would be blasphemy – all fights she would have won, in the end.

She killed everyone responsible for taking the life she deserved with him from her. There was nothing else to do but mourn.

But not today, though she can't help but think on it. This union won't be recognised by Tevinter either, and won't be official in Ferelden. But there's something to be said for common-law, and the day is a joyous one all the same.

“I'm so glad that you came,” Dorian tells her, embraces her.

“Nothing would have had me miss this.”

“This wouldn't have happened without you,” he says. “You really are one of the most extraordinary people I know. I wouldn't be the man I am without you.”

“You give me too much credit, Dorian. We're cut from the same cloth; you would have become this incredible person that you are with or without me. Perhaps you'd be a deal less stylish, however.”

Dorian, who looks to be on the threat of tears, laughs and clasps her hand in his, holds it to his chest besides the dragon tooth hanging there.

“A truth that's hard to stomach, but a truth none the less. If anyone else were to claim it, I'd lie.”

“Of course.”

The Iron Bull approaches in the same exquisite white, deep purple and pinkish-gold as Dorian. She must ask after the responsible tailor later.

“And who is this tall fellow?” she says, putting a hand to her chest in mock surprise.

“Oh,” Dorian says, and she cannot remember the last time she has seen him practically _giddy_ , “this is my husband, the Iron Bull.”

“Charmed!” The Iron Bull takes her offered hand and kisses it. He is every bit as large and as handsome as Dorian has implied.

Dorian, who is looking with concern past Mae's shoulder.

“If you'll excuse me a moment, it appears I need to go rescue Josephine from Rilienus.”

He beckons the Bull down so he can kiss him briefly before striding off. Mae watches the Iron Bull watching his retreating back, grinning rather like she used to catch Thorold grinning at her.

One day perhaps she'll think of him without her heart aching.

“Walk with me, Iron Bull.”

He offers his arm to her and she takes it, and she leads him in a gentle meander through the garden.

“Dorian is the closest thing I have to family,” she says without preamble, once they're a little way out from the crowds. “A treasured friend, and a brother to me.”

“So if I hurt him, I'm dead, right?” the Bull says, the laugh entirely too easy. Forced, perhaps.

“You think that's what this is? Needless. Such a warning would come a little late at your wedding, don't you think? That's not to say that I wouldn't kill anyone who did hurt him, if it came to it – as you would, of course.”

The Iron Bull has done so already. She knows under Dorian's fine outfit the bruises from his ordeal with the Venatori won't have quite faded yet. This wedding is somewhat reactionary, defiant in the face of those who would seek to end his life and their joint purpose.

“I was going to say that Dorian is my family, he has given himself to you and you have given yourself to him; for that, you are family too. If there's ever anything you need, you will have my support.”

She had told Varric much the same at Thorold's funeral. Where blood ties fail her, a stronger bond of family takes its place.

Whatever tension had been in the Iron Bull before – just what has Dorian told him of her? - leaves him.

“Thanks. If you ever need a merc group the Chargers are a good bunch, my lady.”

“Call me Mae.”

“Alright, Mae. Are you going to stay until this thing turns into a party, or have you got to shoot back to Tevinter?”

“I'm not expected back for a few days. I have a few people to visit, but I've no intent to leave if this is going to become a party.”

“Dorian told me you like Dwarven liquor. That you can hold it, too.”

“Did he now?”

“You ever tried anything the qunari make?”

“I can't say that I have, though I'm always willing to try new things.”

The Iron Bull laughs.

“That's how Dorian says he ended up with me.”

“A willingness to try new things, or drink?”

“Both.”

“Then later I will try your worst qunari liquor.”

“I knew you'd encourage each other,” says Dorian, looking ever so fond.

“If you insist on keeping him secret from me for so long, I need to make up for lost time,” she says. Gentle, in her tease. “But now I think you should take your new husband on a turn of the dance floor, Iron Bull. You know how much he loves to dance, for all that he pretends he doesn't.”

“And I knew you'd conspire against me.”

“C'mon kadan, let's dance. Good to finally meet you, Mae.”

The Iron Bull kisses her hand again, and then takes Dorian's hand into his own and leads him away. It's so plain that he is so completely in love with him, and that he makes Dorian happy. He'll have to come back to Tevinter soon, but perhaps it's more bearable, to have this to return to. It's everything Mae has ever wanted for her friend, and more than she could have imagined he'd get to have.

Perhaps blue is not her signature colour after all.

“ **The closest bonds we will ever know are bonds of grief. The deepest community one of sorrow.” - Cormac McCarthy**

 


End file.
